This is a guide to buying authentic Paul & Shark clothing. A member on EBay has written a rough version of this and had put in an auction so people could read it. I thought I should save him some money and put it up as a guide. I have written this up and edited it to make it more understandable. It took a long time to edit this so I hope people appreciate this.

11 Quick and Useful Tips on Buying Genuine Paul and Shark Clothing

1.) Every single Paul & Shark item sold has an identifying code on the swing tags, for example, item code i04p702, colour 050, which is navy blue, size tgu, which is a cap size or s, m, l, xl, xxl, xxxl. They also have lot number like 04884-3 on the washing label and the neck label. They start with cop, 103, e05 or e05. Then following this about 5 more numbers go after it. I’ve just noticed the fake caps so beware of them. They will be flooding before the "world cup". These are the ones made of shiny nylon material with rubbish tags.  Date 27.4.2006

2.) Go to the Paul & Shark website and email them with the item code and they will reply straight away to confirm your number if it is real. They will also let you know exactly what garment it is and give other details about it.

3.) Always ask the seller for the item code, if he refuses or ignores e-mails, then the items are most probably fakes.

4.) You cannot buy genuine Paul & Shark garments for ridiculous buy it now prices at £20 or £40 pounds. Genuine sellers will always start the auction at about £25 to £30. A jumper for example will start at about £20-30.

5.) A genuine Paul & Shark seller will take about 4 close-up pictures. The seller will always try to take digital photos of different parts of the garment. The people selling fakes will just use one picture and that will be on a mannequin or just the top half of a dummy. The picture will not let you see close up. If they showed you a close up picture you will see how poor quality the item really is. The shark sign looks more like a whale, and the writing underneath and above the shark is always joined up on the fakes clothing items.

6.) Whenever you buy original Paul & Shark from the high street stores, you get extras like the tins which the c0p range. Also there are other extras like the gym bag, a metal tin for the really expensive items, a smaller see through bag, and the best one is the suit bag. The fakes on EBay come in cheap bags called dust bags, or the shirts come in Paul & Shark boxes. Avoid these.

7.) There are only a couple of Paul & Shark distributors in England for example Greenwoods or Lemon Shed. Paul & Shark only really supply main stores or reputable high street exclusive clothing stores, not some power seller with masses of them.

8.) Genuine sellers will always be very descriptive of their garments and they won’t write anything like ‘fresh from 2006 winter or summer range’, ‘limited stock’, ‘surplus stock’ or ‘bankrupt stock’.

9.) Some other useful information is one of the tags has a rough feel to it. It’s a raised rough feel. It’s the one that’s 2 inches squared and it just has the shark logo on the front. Also every garment has either a blue loop or a white loop behind the neck label, so you can hang your garments up.

10.) All Paul & Shark items are made in Italy.

11.) Last but not least remember the ‘golden rule’, if something is too good to be true then it always is. For example how can u buy a RRP £350 coat for a buy it now price of £50 or a RRP £150 jumper for a buy it now price of £40. Come on people, what are you really spending your money on?!

Remember all these people selling fakes have good feedback. This is because they never leave feedback first. The reason is simple, they wait for you to leave feedback first, and then they leave their feedback. Just in case you leave bad feedback they will also do the same for you so a lot of EBay members either don’t leave feedback or just leave good feedback. I hope this helps people make the right decision when buying Paul & Shark items. Thank You.